“I Could Never Hope for Anything More Rewarding”: Pleasure, Selfhood, and Emotional Practices in the Forming of the Highland Folk Museum in the 1930s
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: The actions of Dr. Isabel Grant in creating the Highland Folk Museum in Scotland in the 1930s reflect how pleasure interacted with gendered identities to form modern feminine selves in the mid-twentieth century. In examining the subjectivity of Grant and her associates through material, textual, and visual sources from the museum, I interrogate both emotional and representational aspects of her development of living history. I suggest that, along with a sense of care and duty in such museums, women such as Grant were attracted by the opportunities of imaginative play and that they formed identities that were not reducible to either traditional or modern women's roles; instead, they were drawn to a form of historical engagement that allowed them to work outside such labels, sometimes as eccentrics. Their play was more serious and nonironic than were many other forms of interwar modern culture, and living history initiatives since then have built on this modern-but-not-modern appeal.
Source: Journal of British Studies
DOI: 10.1017/jbr.2022.172
Author: Kate Hill
Language: English
Topic: History of Emotions Research
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,255
OpenAlex ID: W4311633856